1142
Treaty of Shaoxing ends Song-Jin war
The Southern Song court, exhausted by years of fighting and stained by the judicial murder of their finest general Yue Fei, signed a humiliating peace with the Jurchen Jin dynasty. The Song emperor formally acknowledged himself a vassal, ceded everything north of the Huai River, and agreed to pay enormous annual tribute in silver and silk. China was now officially and bitterly divided in two.
Death of Peter Abelard
At the Cluniac priory of Saint-Marcel near Chalon-sur-Saone, the broken philosopher died in his mid-sixties. Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, sent his body secretly to Heloise at the Paraclete for burial. Their reunion in death would outlast any of his theological opinions. The epitaph Peter wrote for him praised his genius while carefully avoiding the controversial doctrines that had twice brought Abelard to ecclesiastical ruin.
Twelfth Imam occultation commemorated
Twelver Shia communities across Iraq and Persia quietly marked the passage of time since the child Imam was said to have disappeared into supernatural hiding in 874. The theology of the hidden Imam, developed by scholars at Najaf and Hilla in this century, would shape Shia political thought for a millennium.
Yue Fei executed at Lin'an
The Southern Song general whose victories against the Jin had terrified the Jurchen court was recalled and executed on trumped-up charges by the emperor's chief councilor Qin Hui, who needed a scapegoat for the Treaty of Shaoxing. Yue Fei became China's most enduring symbol of loyal patriotism. Temples in his honor still stand across China, and the bronze kneeling statues of Qin Hui before his tomb are spat upon by visitors to this day.
Earthquake shakes eastern Sicily
A violent earthquake centered near the volcanic slopes of Mount Etna shook eastern Sicily, badly damaging newly built Norman fortifications and collapsing portions of the cathedral at Catania that had only recently been reconstructed after the previous eruption. The tremor was felt across the Strait of Messina in Calabria and triggered landslides in the volcanic highlands above Taormina, disrupting the coastal road for weeks.